Butterflies and Formaldehyde
by Singe Allerdyce
Summary: An average story of adolescant angst... with mutants thrown in. Set in Bayville but not as we know it, with the 'real' X-Men cropping up as peripheral charcters for the moment
1. Smoke Stained Gossamer, Robyn's Story

**Chapter 1**

_She'd known before she sprang, claws drawn, flesh tingling. Another mistake. Another nameless, shapeless fear that held no sway here, only whispered and beckoned in the darkness on the edge of sleep. _

_But it was too late. She was invincible, or at least felt it – each movement almost predestined, every sense fine tuned to the point of precognition._

Funny, then, how she hadn't seen the wall. Again.

Robyn winced, both at the impact and the crunch of skin and bone against plain, rough plaster. Normally she prided herself on silence – the natural stealth possessed by unpopular people, the kind that leaves you alone in a crowd and invisible under the spotlight – and she couldn't help feeling that her louder side, as if in revenge, chose only the most inappropriate moments to emerge; too late for the neighbours and their oh-so-perfect children, who by now would have thanked the God in which she didn't believe for making them real-life Barbie dolls and settled down to dream saccharine chick-flick dreams, too early for her splitting headache. She wondered whether if she pretended to be dead they'd finally leave her alone – people cared so little now, surely they'd ignore her properly once all the flaws took flight and there was nothing left to complain about – and lay back, gazing up at the million little Robyns playing between the crystalline teardrops of her junk-shop chandelier.

She hated that thing. Once, a long time ago, a little girl had watched its shining eyes wink and thought it pretty, but now the image of the babe corrupted only tormented her, each rainbow-hued clone stabbing "Failure" like a glass dagger into her blackened heart.

Robyn sighed. Life sucked, no doubt about it, and not even the omnipotent benevolent smile of Johnny Depp gazing down from the accursed wall could mask the fact that she was a freak. What, for instance, had been all that "claws" nonsense? She knew she was weird, but surely she was still human? And yet...

No. That was stupid. Real people don't have claws. Logic had to prevail – the ugly red grazes that slashed her knuckles were just that; a childish accident. Even now they had begun to fade away. It was a dream, that was all. Nothing more.


	2. To The Flame, Amy's Story

**Chapter 2**

Amy struggled to stop herself shaking, fighting the urge to hold her breath. The crisp early morning air felt like cold razorblades in her throat as she forced herself to gulp it down, to live just a little longer. It was just a dream.

One trembling hand reach towards her burning porcelain face, where only moments ago she'd sworn she felt the sting of claws and leapt up, shivering in the darkness. Just a dream, that was all. And yet...

And yet, what? It had _felt _real, no doubt. But dreams had a habit of doing that, didn't they? She ran her slender and perfectly manicured fingertips through fairy-tale hair. Who cared what it felt like? In the soft light of day she'd tell herself how she had remained perfectly calm and dignified throughout and fallen back to sleep without a single hitch. Credits roll, happily ever after, the end.

But lying there, trapped between longing for another dream to come and fearing what that might be, she didn't know whether she would believe it.


	3. In The Pickling Jar

**Chapter 3**

Bayville High. He'd spent years here, knew the place like the back of his hand.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. He knew it like he knew his hand inside a black leather glove, seeing the shape but not the detail. Robbed of any true identity, it was just like everywhere else he knew. Monotonous and monochrome.

Even the one thing that usually brought him solace couldn't help. In fact, thinking about the love of his life only made things worse as he realised how little he actually knew about her. Sure, he knew all the romantic nonsense – her favourite chocolates, which flowers she liked, and what love songs made her vision blurry and her breathing slow. He knew her deep dark secrets. But it was the silly little things that tormented him as he tried to picture her in his mind. Shape, but no detail, everything overshadowed by the terrible benevolent curse. Ask him what colour her eyes were, and though he'd gazed in them a million times he would have to answer the same as for any other object.

Pink.

---------

Scott Summers depressed. Now that really was a turn up for the books.

Robyn slumped against her locker, watching. It wouldn't last, of course. One glance from Miss. Grey, looking down from her pedestal, and he'd perk right up. The perfect couple. How sweet.

She punched the cold metal apathetically, the studs on her fingerless leather gloves biting bruised flesh. Funny how two nutcases from Xavier's School for the Seriously Weird could become the Westchester's epitome of cool, while the completely un-extraordinary, if a little maladjusted, were...

"Morning, Freak"

Robyn scowled, both at the disruption of her musings and the inconvenience of having to think of a good comeback. Weird how they hated her for being a... whatever, then hated her even more for defying their classification with an apathy too easily mistaken for lack of attitude. Who the hell came up with these classifications anyway, deciding what was 'cool' or not? Black was what she chose to wear, not a lifestyle choice, for chrissakes!

Thankfully the little brat was distracted as a much better target came into view. Another 'nutcase', one she thought better deserving of the praise and adoring glances lavished on Scott and Jean. They could have been twins, although Robyn thought the white bangs would have made it much harder to hide, and so saved them for after graduation when she'd become a proper recluse and live in Alaska. Instead her hair, once again playing against those stupid stereotypes, was a strange sort of tawny blonde – 'beige on acid', perhaps, had anyone bottled it. Not one to launch a leaky dinghy, let alone a thousand ships, but that was how she liked it; an invisible girl, roaming the corridors and classrooms. A face without a name. Just another freak.

-------

Goddam freaks. Why weren't they all quarantined or something?

Amy flicked her hair and yawned idly, one delicate ivory hand raised to cover the peachy oval yet tilted almost imperceptibly so as not to smudge her expensive designer lip-gloss. It wasn't normally _done _to swear, but in this case she felt it justified. It was bad enough that some people didn't even try to conform to perfection. But to have MUTANTS running around? It didn't bear thinking about.

And yet that was the reality, wasn't it? Anyone she passed in the street could be a monster. Even her fellow students.... The people whose air she shared at that very moment. Disgusting. The thought of dirty air polluting her lungs like an oil slick, swirling through her bloodstream, made her nauseous, a vain attempt to purge her of the corruption.

Amy tossed her head in a gesture both casual and contrived to keep from fainting. Of course there would be mutants, there always had been, wasn't that what Professor Xavier had been on about in those stupid lectures? But not here. That was just silly.


End file.
